Module 2

Lesson 1
🟦 [Slide: Lesson 1 – Power BI]
"Good morning everyone and welcome to our first deep dive into Power BI! I hope
you’re all settled and ready to explore one of the most powerful tools in the data
analytics world today. In this session, we’ll be covering the fundamentals of Power
BI—what it is, how it works, and how we use it to transform raw data into
meaningful insights. Whether you're new to business intelligence or have some
experience in Excel, you’ll find this session valuable and applicable to real-life
decision-making.
Now, a quick heads-up: today’s session is interactive. I’ll be guiding you through
explanations, but I’ll also ask you to reflect, discuss in small breakout rooms, and
later observe a demonstration. Our key focus areas will include understanding what
Power BI is, exploring PowerBI.com, getting familiar with the Report Server, Power BI
Desktop, learning how to create reports and dashboards, and finally, observing how
all this comes together through a practical demonstration."

🔵 [Slide: What is Power BI?]

"Let’s start with the big question—What is Power BI?
Power BI is Microsoft’s end-to-end business intelligence platform that lets you
visualize your data and share insights across your organization or embed them in an
app or website. The full suite includes Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service (the web
portal), Power BI Report Server, and Power BI Mobile. Think of it as a toolkit that
enables both business users and analysts to connect to data, shape it, build
visualizations, and share interactive reports.
So what can you actually do with Power BI? Here’s a simple breakdown. You can
quickly create professional reports, import data from almost any source including
files, databases, and cloud services. You can combine different data sources—like
Excel and SQL—into one report. Once built, your reports can be published either to
the cloud or to on-premises servers. You can design dashboards that display KPIs,
visuals, and metrics in real time. And with Power BI Mobile, you can view these
dashboards and reports on the go.
💬 Let me ask you—Can you think of a situation in your current or past job where
quick data-based decisions could have improved outcomes? Feel free to share in the
chat. We’ll take 2–3 quick responses."
(Wait for responses; encourage real-world relevance.)

🟡 [Slide: PowerBI.com]
"Now let’s talk about PowerBI.com—also called the Power BI Service. This is the
web-based platform where you can publish, share, and collaborate on dashboards
and reports.
When you log into Power BI Service, you’ll find your personal 'Workspace'—this is
where you’ll manage everything. Your workspace includes:
 Dashboards: single-page collections of visuals from different reports.
 Reports: collections of interactive visualizations from one dataset.
 Workbooks: imported Excel files with data models or PivotTables.
 Datasets: the raw data or structured tables that your reports are built on.
So, after you build a report using Power BI Desktop, you publish it to the Power BI
Service, and then from there, you can pin individual visual elements to dashboards,
schedule data refreshes, and even share them securely with your team."
Quick question for discussion: “Why do you think having a web-based portal is
beneficial in a workplace? What would be the downside of relying only on desktop
tools?”

🟠 [Slide: Power BI Report Server]

"Power BI Report Server is the solution for organizations that want to keep their data
and reporting infrastructure entirely on-premises.
It combines the traditional capabilities of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) with
Power BI reports. This is especially useful for sectors like banking, healthcare, and
government where data privacy and compliance require stricter control.
To use it, your organization needs either a Power BI Premium license or SQL Server
Enterprise Edition with Software Assurance. Once set up, the Report Server is
downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center and configured using a tool called
Report Server Configuration Manager.
You don’t necessarily need this for personal use, but if you're planning a career in IT
or working with regulated industries, this is good to know."

🟢 [Slide: Power BI Desktop]

"Now we’re moving to one of the most important tools in the Power BI suite—Power
BI Desktop. This is the main tool used to build reports before sharing them through
the service or server.
Power BI Desktop is a free application you can download from the Microsoft website.
It combines Power Query for data shaping, data modeling tools to create
relationships, and visualization tools for building your final report.
The report creation process follows three clear steps:
1. Connect to data sources like Excel, SQL, web data, etc.
2. Shape the data using Power Query—removing errors, filtering, merging
columns.
3. Create the report by dragging fields into visualizations and building charts.
The main views in Power BI Desktop are:
 Report view – Where you build visuals.
 Data view – Where you clean and manipulate your raw tables.
 Relationships view – Where you connect tables logically.
We’ll do a short demonstration on this later, but I want you to remember this
structure when we move forward."

🔷 [Slide: Reports]
"Reports in Power BI can consist of multiple pages—just like a PowerPoint
presentation. Each page contains visualizations that help users understand key
metrics and trends.
You can either import the data fully into your report or use 'DirectQuery' to establish
a live connection with your data source. DirectQuery is useful when you're working
with large or frequently changing datasets.
In the report view, you can add visuals like bar charts, pie charts, tables, maps, and
more. In the data view, you can transform raw data using Power Query Editor. And
in the relationships view, you manage how different datasets link to each other—for
example, how a customer table connects to a sales table using customer ID.
Once your report is complete, you can publish it directly to PowerBI.com."

🔶 [Slide: Dashboards]
"A dashboard is a high-level summary created by pinning visuals from reports. It’s a
single canvas that displays key indicators, often used by managers and executives
for monitoring performance.
You can pin individual charts, KPIs, or maps from a report to a dashboard. There’s
even a feature called 'Pin Live Page' that allows you to pin an entire report page as-
is.
Dashboards can be shared with others in read-only mode. And Power BI offers a
'Full-Screen' presentation mode, which is ideal for board meetings or display on
large monitors.
You can also set up 'Favorite' and 'Featured' dashboards for easy access. Lastly, a
cool feature is the 'Last Refresh Time' which tells viewers when the data was last
updated."
📣 “Group Discussion Prompt (10 minutes in breakout rooms): Imagine you’re
building a dashboard for your manager. What 3 metrics or visuals would you
include, and why? Think from a business point of view—sales trends, employee
performance, customer feedback, etc.”
(Allow 10 mins, then call on 2–3 groups to share.)

🔺 [Slide: Designing Reports and Dashboards]

"Design is everything when it comes to readability and communication. A well-
designed report can make a massive difference in how insights are interpreted.
Let’s go through some best practices. First, always customize visuals. Use
consistent colors, borders, titles, and group visuals with similar content. Second,
positioning matters—put the most critical data on top or in the center where users
look first, especially on mobile.
Know your audience. If your end user is an executive, show KPIs. If it’s a team
member, show operational details. Also, use storytelling. Don’t just dump data—
guide the viewer through a narrative. And finally, formatting: choose chart types
wisely. Use large visuals for important metrics and test multiple visual options
before finalizing."

🧪 [Slide: Demonstration – Creating a Report in Power BI Desktop]

"Let me now walk you through a basic demonstration. I’ll open Power BI Desktop,
and we’ll create a report using sample data."
💻 Demonstration Steps:
1. Open Power BI Desktop.
2. Click “Get Data” → Choose “SQL Server” → Enter server name and database
(AdventureWorksLT).
3. Load the tables like ‘SalesOrderHeader’ and ‘Product’.
4. Use 'Model' view to create relationships between tables using ProductID.
5. Drag fields like ‘SalesAmount’, ‘OrderDate’, and ‘ProductCategory’ to a bar
chart.
6. Add a KPI card to display Total Revenue.
7. Save the file and explain the .PBIX format.
 "Notice how we didn’t need to code anything. All of this was done with a few clicks,
dragging and dropping fields."

🧾 [Final Wrap-Up and Assignment]

"Before we finish, let’s quickly review what we covered today. We explored the
Power BI ecosystem—Desktop, Service, Report Server, and Mobile. We looked at
how to create, design, and publish reports and dashboards, and we even built a
sample report live.

Lesson 2
🟦 [Introduction – Welcome to Lesson 2: The Power BI Service]
"Good morning, everyone! Welcome back to our Power BI series. I hope you all had
a chance to reflect on what we explored in Lesson 1. Today, we’re diving into
Lesson 2: The Power BI Service. If Lesson 1 was all about building the
foundation with Power BI Desktop, this session is going to open up the cloud-based
capabilities and collaborative potential of the Power BI ecosystem.
By the end of our session today, you should be confident in explaining the key
components of Power BI Service, including how licensing works, how tenants are
managed, what datasets are and how we handle them, what Row-Level Security
means and how it’s configured, and how we can use content packs and even natural
language queries to simplify report building. We’ll also go through a live
demonstration showing how to publish a report and create a content pack.
Let’s begin our deep dive with Licensing."

🟦 [Licensing]
"In the world of Power BI, licensing determines what features are accessible to you
or your organization. There are mainly two types of licenses we’re going to talk
about today: Power BI Free and Power BI Pro.
Now, Power BI Free accounts are great for individual use and for those just starting
out. They must be created using a work or school email address, and they provide
up to 1 GB of storage. This might seem small, but for lightweight reports, it’s
sufficient. However, the data refresh can only be scheduled once per day, which is a
significant limitation if your data updates more frequently.
Now contrast this with Power BI Pro. Pro accounts are designed for team
collaboration and are purchased either individually or through an organization’s
Office 365 admin portal. These accounts come with 10 GB of storage per user,
support eight data refreshes per day, and offer a wide range of collaboration
features. These include creating content packs, managing access via Azure Active
Directory, and sharing reports and dashboards with colleagues."
Discussion Prompt: “If you're working in a department that frequently shares and
updates reports, which license type would you recommend and why? Share your
thoughts in the chat.”

🟦 [Tenant Management]
"Next, let’s explore how Power BI manages organizational users through something
called Tenant Management.
A ‘tenant’ in Power BI is essentially a container that holds all users, workspaces, and
content within an organization. Power BI uses a self-service sign-up model, which
means users can sign up with their work email—without needing admin permissions
—and instantly become part of a Power BI tenant. For example, if your email is
[email protected], you would either create or join the 'contoso.com' tenant. This
is great because it allows users to collaborate within the same organizational
structure.
But what about control and oversight? That’s where Office 365 admins come in.
Admins can manage sign-ups through the Power BI Admin Portal or the Office 365
Admin Center. They can assign licenses, set permissions, and even request
additional licenses from Microsoft if needed.
In large organizations, managing tenants ensures that data security and
collaboration are streamlined and scalable."
Interactive Thought Prompt: “Why do you think tenant-based management is
important in enterprise environments like hospitals or banks?”

🟦 [Datasets]
"Let’s now shift our attention to Datasets, which are the backbone of any Power BI
project.
In Power BI, a dataset is essentially a structured set of data that your reports and
dashboards are built upon. You can import datasets through Power BI Desktop or
directly through the PowerBI.com portal. This can include sources like Excel files, on-
premises SQL servers, cloud platforms like Azure, and even SaaS tools like
Salesforce or Google Analytics.
One of the powerful things about Power BI is its data transformation capability.
When you load a dataset into Power BI, you can clean it up, format it, split or merge
columns, and perform aggregations using Power Query Editor. This transforms
raw, messy data into clean, structured information.
You can also refresh your datasets on a schedule. In Power BI Pro, you can schedule
up to eight refreshes a day, ensuring that your data remains up to date and
relevant."
Discussion Prompt: “Have any of you worked with messy Excel files in the past?
How useful would it be to automate data cleanup using Power BI?”

🟦 [Row-Level Security (RLS)]

"Now comes one of the most critical features for data privacy and access control—
Row-Level Security, or RLS.
Imagine you’ve created a sales report that includes all regional data for Canada. You
want your Ontario sales rep to only see Ontario data—not Alberta, not BC. That’s
where RLS comes in.
RLS allows you to define roles and apply filters using DAX expressions like [Region]
= "Ontario". These filters control which rows of data a user can see. You can even
combine this with the USERNAME() function, so Power BI automatically filters the
data based on who’s logged in.
But keep in mind: RLS must be set up carefully. It requires a Pro license and, if
created in the Power BI Service, the roles must also be recreated in Power BI
Desktop if you’re working locally.
Let’s say your Excel file is your dataset—you’ll need to convert it to a .pbix file for
RLS to work correctly."
Quick Check: “Why is Row-Level Security important in HR or Finance reports?”

🟦 [Content Packs]
"Now let’s talk about Content Packs, one of the most efficient ways to share
reports and dashboards.
Think of content packs as bundles that include your dashboards, reports, and
datasets. Once created, these can be shared with other users, either in your
team or across the entire organization. After importing a content pack, the user will
see the components inside their 'My Workspace'.
These packs can be customized for different teams, labeled with a title and
description, and even include your organization’s logo. However, note that you
cannot exclude datasets—they come bundled in by default. Content packs are
perfect for disseminating standard metrics or executive dashboards across a
company.
You can also import content packs from third-party providers like Bing,
MailChimp, and Marketo. These often come pre-configured and are great for quickly
integrating external data sources."
 Ask the Class: “Can you think of an example where your team could benefit from a
standardized dashboard shared as a content pack?”

🟦 [Natural Language Queries – Q&A]

"One of the most exciting features of Power BI Service is Natural Language
Queries, known as Q&A.
This feature allows users to simply type questions like, 'What were total sales in
April?' or 'Show me revenue by region as a map,' and Power BI responds instantly
with a visual answer. It’s like Google Search, but for your data.
This makes data more accessible to non-technical users who may not know how to
build visuals manually. Power BI Q&A also uses auto-complete, spell correction,
and suggested phrasing, helping users ask better questions.
And the best part? You can pin those answers to dashboards just like regular
visuals."
Activity Prompt: “Let’s brainstorm—what are some common questions your
manager might ask? Try phrasing them as you would in the Q&A box.”

🟦 [Demonstration: Creating a Content Pack]

"Alright, let’s pull all of this together with a quick demonstration on Creating a
Content Pack.
Here’s what I’ll do:
First, I’ll publish a report I built in Power BI Desktop to the Power BI Service. I’ll then
use that report to create a dashboard. Finally, I’ll show you how to bundle that
dashboard and its dataset into a content pack. You’ll see how to name it, add a
description, and share it with your organization.
Please observe this carefully—it’s one of the most valuable ways to distribute
analytics across departments."

Steps:
 Start in Power BI Desktop. Load the AdventureWorksLT data.
 Build a basic report: sales by product category, total revenue card, and trend
over time.
 Publish the report to the Power BI Service.
 In Power BI Service, pin visuals to a new dashboard.
 Navigate to the 'Settings' icon and choose 'Create Content Pack.'
 Select the dataset and dashboard, write a description, add a logo if you like.
 Share it with your organization or specific groups.
🟦 [Wrap-Up: Module Review and Takeaways]
"Let’s wrap up our session with some key takeaways.
The Power BI Service enables faster and more collaborative reporting through its
cloud-based interface. Licensing determines how much you can do, while tenant
management ensures secure, organizational boundaries. Datasets form the heart of
any report, and their refresh and transformation define report accuracy. Features
like Row-Level Security and Content Packs bring privacy and efficiency, while tools
like Q&A make analytics accessible to everyone.